Israeli startup Kaltura, the leading open source video platform, has announced an additional $47 million funding round. The company also released a new Video Extension for IBM Connections.
The financing round was led by new investors SAP Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, Commonfund Capital, and Brazil-based Gera Ventures with participation from existing investors .406 Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, and Silicon Valley Bank.
“The rapid adoption of our technology around the globe is a testament to the central role that video plays in every facet of our connected lives. We are proud to enable and streamline the creation of hundreds of video-enabled applications and workflows, and to assist hundreds of millions of people to improve the way they work, learn, collaborate, and entertain using video,” said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman and CEO.
The funding comes on the heels of a super successful year. Kaltura, which was founded in 2006 as the world’s first and only open-source online video platform for media management and custom app development, won numerous titles from technology magazines for its performance in 2013.
It was recently named ‘One of 10 Wildly Successful Startups’ by Inc. Magazine, ‘One of 5 Companies That Made Media Consumption Smarter This Year’ by Forbes, and ‘One of 5 Companies That Transformed Enterprise Communication in 2013’ and ‘One of Top 5 Startups Revolutionizing Education’ by Business Insider.
“Video will soon constitute two thirds of all mobile data, and as such is an area of great interest for us as a leader in enabling mobility,” said Upal Basu, Partner at Nokia Growth Partners. “Kaltura’s business progress and market-leading HTML5 based video technology made it a natural choice for NGP. We look forward to collaborating closely with the company and assisting with global expansion.”
Kaltura said it will use the additional capital to further accelerate product development, and extend operations into Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and Korea.
“Following our success in North America and Europe, we started addressing Asia Pacific and Latin America and were met by explosive demand,” said Yekutiel. “We will continue to grow our operations in all four regions this year, as well as further accelerate our product development. Upcoming releases include advanced live, OTT, analytics, and monetization solutions for media companies and service providers; webcasting capabilities for enterprises; and lecture capture capabilities for educational institutions.”
In related news, Kaltura announced that its new Video Extension for IBM Connections combines the company’s market leading enterprise video platform with IBM’s leading social business software.
“The powerful combination of Kaltura and IBM Connections empowers employees with intuitive video tools that they are already comfortable using within their social business environment, while providing peace of mind to IT by allowing to securely centrally manage all rich media content in the organization,” said Yekutiel.
Kaltura customers comprise media companies including the likes of HBO, ABC, Warner Brothers, Paramount, DirecTV, Turner, and Wikipedia; leading corporations such as Bank of America, Intel, SAP, Century 21, Ericsson, Danone, Discount Tire, Accenture, AstraZeneca, Groupon, Nestle, Philips and IKEA; and leading educational institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Durham, Warwick, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, California State University and NYU.
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